8.27.2010

goats in central park

Did you know that goats used to roam central park? It seems that Back in 1864, famed Central Park landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux were going for a bucolic English countryside look when they imported 200 sheep to graze on a lush 15-acre pasture, giving birth to the park's Sheep Meadow. There, the herbivores trimmed, frolicked, and fertilized. Some 80 years later, it's still a good idea, so why don't we do it?

The folks at Yahoo, Google, and the Vanderbilt Mansion, a national historic site in New Hyde Park, NY, have hired goats to tame their expanses in a way that uses fewer toxins and machinery. As Christina Page, Yahoo's director of Climate and Energy Strategy, told Treehugger in June, "We opted for a creative -- and greener -- alternative to spraying the weeds with pesticides."

What a wonderful and simple idea! I guess you would have to check with your neighbors. But there have been a few companies that 'rent' goats to help tame you lawn (you can visit a website called 'goatfinder' to see if there is anyone participating near you or just go and ask your neighborhood farm if you can borrow their goats. I think this is just one of the most obvious ideas I have heard in a long time.

And getting back to NYC's Central Park, did you know that Tavern on the Green was the 'goat barn'... I think it was put to MUCH better use as a barn than a tourist destination, right?!

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